The portrait of his gardener, Vallier

The portrait of his gardener, Vallier, is typical of a good many portraits of these years. Here again the aspect chosen is less frontal, there is a free sweeping emphasis in the contours very different from the precision and austerity of the Geffroy. The picture is deep in tone and rich with the sombre glow of indigos, broken with violet and green, and contrasted with rich earth reds and oranges.

Once more, at this moment of recrudescent romantic emotion Cézanne was haunted by his old dream of the a priori creation of a design which should directly embody the emotions of his inner life. This desire took the form of a vast design of naked women seen under a canopy of foliage. There are several canvases, some of colossal size, devoted to his repeated essays in this direction. Two of these are of monumental dimensions and belongs almost to the close of the century. A comparison of the two shows great changes. The colour in the earlier version is gay and almost light, in the latter the blues have become heavy with successive glazes and the flesh tones are rich and glowing. There is also a considerable change in the forms. The earlier version gives us perhaps the nearer approach to what Cézanne was aiming at in his repeated essays. The point of departure is the pyramid given by the inclined tree trunks on either side. The poses of the figures are clearly dictated by this--too clearly, too obtrusively indeed do they adapt themselves to this elementary schema. In spite of the marvels of his handling and the richness and delicacy of the colour transitions he has not escaped the effect of dryness and wilfulness which so deliberate a formula arouses.

It is touching to see the unyielding pertinacity with which Cézanne returns again and again to the attack, to his old effort to overcome his fundamental inaptitude for invention: thus up to the end, obsessed by the idea of rivalling a Titian or at least a Delacroix, he refused to accept his own limitations and to take his place among those great imaginative artists to whom some actual vision is necessary as a point of departure.

In the later version of this theme there is an attempt to avoid the extreme symmetry of the earlier, though the constant repetition of the same two balancing diagonal directions persists. But the individual forms of the figures have become even more disconcerting. For so many years Cézanne's fear of the model had deprived him of all observation of nature that his power of conjuring up a credible image to his inner eye, never remarkable, has by now become extremely feeble. He is forced to fall back on general ideas in order to construct his figures. It cannot be denied that the result is calculated to outrage our notions of feminine beauty. These bodies have become almost geometric abstractions with which he seeks desperately to establish significant combinations. Two or three poses of which he retained a vague memory have to do duty again and again in these compositions. He varies and combines them in different ways, but without ever, it would seem, arriving at a result which satisfies him.

Those of us who love Cézanne to the point of infatuation find, no doubt, our profit even in these efforts of the aged artist; but good sense must prevent us from trying to impose them on the world at large, as we feel we have the right to do with regard to the masterpieces of portraiture and landscape.

But to correct the rather disparaging account which I have given of these works, I must cite a smaller design of the same subject which belongs to M. Vollard. It is, I believe, his last effort to lay this old obsession. Here, too, the trees incline from either side to frame a large expanse of sky and distance in front of which the nude figures appear. Here the dimensions of the canvas did not force Cézanne to attempt an almost sculptural relief in his figures such as the monumental scale of the others had done. The nude figures are conceived in a more purely pictorial vein, the forms only indicated with a rapid and almost elegant touch, with the result that they enter easily into the general movement of the landscape. They are expressed with the same spontaneity and freedom of handling. In this way Cézanne has attained a much greater variety of poses with the happiest result. The dominant lines are still strongly marked, but the geometric scheme is more freely varied. Thus liberated from a cramping pre-occupation Cézanne regains all the prestige of his chromatic sensibility. The dominant harmony is a pearly grey, which modulates now into faded eau de Nil, now into the faintest roses, and against this play the more golden greys of the flesh. Throughout, it shows an elusive subtlety of colour which has extraordinary charm, and agrees well with a tonality reminiscent of fresco painting.